The Expendables 2 (2012)

I’m Not Gonna Hurt You.  I’m Gonna Take Your Life.

The reason for watching today’s movie was clear.  Why did I watch it?  Because fuckin’ man-tits-balls-ass-‘splosions Mountain Dew!  That’s why!!  Also, I reviewed the first one and the second one just came out in RedBox.  These two movies were very popular with men far more manly than I am, and the first one didn’t do much for me, but it wasn’t bad and had good action.  When they came out with a sequel, I wasn’t really inspired enough to see it in theaters even though Rotten Tomatoes told me it was better than the first.  I knew its time would come eventually.  And that time is now, so let’s get into my review of The Expendables 2, written (allegedly) by Richard Wenk and Sylvester Stallone, directed by Simon West, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Liam Hemsworth, Yu Nan, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Scott Adkins, Jet Li, and Charisma Carpenter.

Though it has nothing to do with the story proper, The Expendables – leader Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), knife-thrower (and brother of Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber) Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), martial artist Yin Yang (Jet Li), heavy-weapons specialist Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), demolitionist Toll Road (Randy Couture), crazy dude Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and the new guy sniper Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) – go to Nepal to rescue some doctor and the captured mercenary Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger).  Yang inexplicably leaves the group and doesn’t return.  CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) replaces one Asian for another – a technical expert named Maggie Chan (Yu Nan) – and sends him on a mission to retrieve something out of a safe.  While they go, Billy goes through a checklist of all the things he can say that means he’s going to get killed soon.  The team then encounter Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who shockingly kills Billy.  After they recover, the Expendables set out for revenge.

I find that I am not nearly manly enough to forgive the problems of a movie like this.  The action is good, but the story is really predictable and the dialogue is painfully bad in parts.  The most predictable thing in this movie by far is the death of Liam “Handsome McSnipey” Hemsworth.  Generally I would expect movie makers to try to avoid clichés, especially if they’re going to want something to have some emotional impact in a little while.  But they did the whole checklist.  It was like the scene near the end of Black Dynamite, except this movie wasn’t a parody.  It was like, “I know I’m the new guy on the team that the audience would be less attached to – and I’m also the least famous person in this jet right now – but I’m so happy we’ve all gotten so attached so quickly that you guys will take it really hard if I die.  Not that I’m going to, though.  I have so much to live for.  This is my last mission until I retire and return to my girlfriend who loves me.  I can’t wait to not have a knife kicked into my chest by Jean-Claude Van Damme!”  After that, the rest of the movie could be summed up with “Revenge.”  I guess technically the entire story of the movie could just be summed up with, “New guy gets killed.  Team sad.  Revenge.”  A predictable action movie story is … well … predictable to me.  I guess bad dialogue is as well, but this movie still caught me off guard with how bad the dialogue was.  The cheesy “Chill out” from Batman & Robin lines are one thing, but they really hit us hard with the bad jokes about these action stars past careers.  You get “I’m back” and “You’ve been back enough” for Schwarzenegger, someone says “Yippee Kay Yay” to Willis, and they even drop a Chuck Norris fact or two for the be-bearded one.  I do appreciate having their careers referenced, but I would rather they do so with funny lines, not ones that may have given me an ulcer.  I don’t know if it’s an ulcer, I just know I’m shitting blood after watching it.  Perhaps I’ve disclosed too much …  I did get a minor smirk out of the Chuck Norris fact they used, but there’s also a very good chance it was just on the website and they just took it.  It was, “I was bitten by a King Cobra once but, after 5 days of agonizing pain, the Cobra finally died.”

One thing about this movie that I would not argue with would be that the action is interesting.  I know Stallone didn’t direct this movie, but the way action is done in his movies ever since the newest Rambo movie seems to be at his influence and I really appreciate how it looks.  It’s some strange mixture of realistic and gruesome while simultaneously being over the top and bombastic.  Shooting an enemy turns them into a bag of blood and gore and they get knocked back 20 feet by a single bullet or a hand-thrown knife hitting them in the chest.  The gunplay – and even the knife-play – was interesting to watch.  Some of the hand-to-hand stuff was interesting, but strangely it was worse when it involved the two best fighters: Randy Couture and Jet Li.  I don’t think Stallone knows how to set up martial arts, but he puts someone like Jet Li in a movie anyway.  In the first movie, I recall finding Jet Li’s fight scene disappointing, and I don’t even recall Randy Couture having one.  In this movie, Jet Li starts off with a decent fight in the beginning, but never again.  And the only thing I remember Couture doing that was vaguely in his ballpark was pinning a guy against a wall and throwing an elbow at his head.  Kind of underwhelming for the shit I’ve seen those two guys do in the past.  I would say that I appreciated most of the fight between Stallone and Van Damme.  It was pretty well done.  There were also some cars that were totally Mad Maxed out in the beginning, and there was also a part where they seemed to steal a scene from another movie.  It was when Stallone was surrounded and out of ammo and he acted like his finger was a gun, only to have his fake shooting backed up by a real sniper killing the guys.  I’m pretty sure that was something Chris Evans did in Losers.

The performances were what you’d expect.  Maybe a little better.  Not great, but I could imagine going into this movie thinking that these guys couldn’t even string words together.  But this movie is so gangnamed dripping with testosterone that I failed a random drug test after watching it.  I WOULD’VE WON THE TOUR DE FRANCE!  But everything in this movie is Orange County Choppers and Ed Hardy shit with skulls all over them.  Stallone even uses a pen in this movie that looked like he soldered trinkets from Hot Topic all over it.  Of course, the biggest thing to say about the cast of this movie is that it’s slathered with big name action stars.  The problem with that is that most of them are really showing their age.  Most of them still look ripped physically, but Stallone’s face looks like he got mauled by bees and Van Damme has alien eyes when he takes the sunglasses off.  I was also confused by Yu Nan.  She did a fine job in the movie, but I was confused about why he didn’t go for some JCVD version of an Asian actress for the role.  There are much bigger Asian actresses he might have been able to get!  He could’ve gotten Zhang Ziyi, Maggie Q, Michelle Yeoh, or any number of Asian actresses that were already known to Americans.  She just seemed out of place.

The Expendables 2 was roughly what I expected out of it.  Good action, soaked in testosterone and explosions on one hand, and the other hand is filled by blunt writing and dialogue so bad it gave me an aneurism.  And there’s really nothing to say about the performances in this movie; everyone in the world should have seen at least one movie with most of these guys featured.  And if you haven’t, then you’re probably not going to see this movie no matter what I say.  Otherwise, it’s fine enough for a watch.  Especially to make fun of.  The Expendables 2 gets “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man … and knife” out of “Who’s next, Rambo?”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Predator (1987)

This Stuff Will Make You a God Damned Sexual Tyrannosaurus.

In my mind, my review of the Alien series would not be complete if I didn’t first review Alien vs. Predator.  Unlike even the worst Alien movies, AvP will probably give me a lot more to make fun of, being much lower in quality.  But I couldn’t just jump right into that movie either, because there’s another name in that title that I haven’t reviewed yet.  The first movie in this series is a classic sci-fi action movie but, as with many movies, I didn’t see it when it came out and I was a kid.  Without the nostalgia making it seem better than it actually is, was this movie able to hold up in the present?  We’ll find out in my review of Predator, written by Jim and John Thomas, directed by John McTiernan, and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Peter Hall, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Sonny Landham, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke, Richard Chaves, Shane Black, and R.G. Armstrong.

A group of mercenaries lead by Major Alan “Doesn’t my accent sound ‘Dutch’” Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is hired by his old military buddy, George Dillon (Carl Weathers), to rescue a captured presidential cabinet member from guerrilla forces in Val Verde.  When they get there, they find a downed helicopter and the skinned bodies of an Army Special Forces unit.  They take out a nearby rebel encampment, but soon start to realize that there’s something else in the jungle, hunting them with thermal vision, a laser gun, cloaking device, and dreadlocks.

This is a very cool sci-fi action flick.  It borders on cheesy in more than one occasion, but overall it still holds up as entirely kick ass.  One thing I got to thinking about is how much more interesting I probably would’ve found this movie on my first viewing, at least if I had no prior knowledge of what I was watching.  If you think about it, not knowing anything about the movie you would be caught completely off guard by the fact that it starts off as a pretty typical army type of movie that strangely keeps cutting back to something that’s watching them in infrared.  Not until almost the midway point do you actually find out that an alien is in the mix.  I like the way the movie unfolds, and I like how it concludes.  All of that Arnold stuff, caked in mud and fighting the alien with whatever he could assemble from the jungle.  Yeah, I know the Mythbusters proved that the mud wouldn’t actually mask his heat signature, but I’m still perfectly comfortable suspending my disbelief to enjoy it.  I laughed at the part where the black dude was unloading into the forest because he saw the Predator and the other guys on the team ran up and just started shooting at random, knowing nothing more than they were clearing out some foliage.  I did take a pretty big issue with one big logic loophole in the movie.  Arnold figures out pretty early on that the Predator wants a challenge, and even kicks the gun out of the girl’s hand because he won’t attack her if she’s unarmed and not a challenge.  Why the hell didn’t everyone just throw their guns down?  They would’ve all survived apparently!  There were some parts to the dialogue that I could take issue with because of their corniness, but it’s an Arnold movie from the 80s!  If I didn’t go in expecting some bad dialogue, then I was fooling myself.  When Arnold stuck a guy to a pole with his knife and he said, “Stick around,” I couldn’t help but think he was getting started really early for his pun-tacular role as Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin.  I also laughed when one of the soldiers was going off because of Harper’s death, saying, “You don’t understand how bad this thing is.  Whatever it is out there, it killed Harper!” because I thought to myself, “Yeah, and nothing’s killed Harper before!”  On a more positive note, I had completely forgotten where the quote that almost everyone includes in their Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions – “Get to tha choppa!” – came from, and it’s this movie.  I usually go with, “Get to the choppa, Danny!” which I believe is a mash up of this movie and Last Action Hero, but I’m okay with it.

The look of the movie is also pretty well done and mostly holds up.  I respect a time when explosions were actually happening on the set.  Also, the fake dead bodies were pretty well done.  They made a couple of odd choices with the look though.  Like right in the beginning, when Arnold and Carl Weathers shook hands and the camera focused a little too long on their rippling buffness.  On the other hand, if you’re a gay guy, they probably focus on it just long enough for you to tug one out.  And that’s not the only moment that a gay dude could spank to, so it’s got that goin’ for it.  Also, the part where the Predator was performing surgery on his wound, it was less than convincing and seemed more like he was just poking his wound with random items.

The performances were … a bunch of muscle bound dudes and at least one who spoke English as a second language.  What do you expect?  Arnold was indeed an action star and he does nothing to tarnish that in this movie.  As muscle bound as ever and he doesn’t try to act so there’s really not much to hold against him.  I preferred Jesse Ventura’s character though, just because of the ridiculous things he’d say, like when he called everyone a bunch of slack-jawed faggots because they wouldn’t try the chewing tobacco that studies have shown will make one a goddamned sexual tyrannosaur.  He also found himself far too strapped for time to have any left over to bleed, so that’s also a plus.  They also had a comic relief guy that I didn’t find that annoying, even though every single one of his jokes was about how big his girlfriend’s vagina was.

Predator definitely holds up.  It’s not the smartest movie ever, but it’s also not entirely dumb.  The story leads you in one direction before dropping an alien on you to make it science fiction, the action is still great fun to watch, and you just can’t expect much from the performances, and you’d be right.  But the movie is still great and still entirely watchable, even by today’s standards.  Predator gets “So you cooked up a story and dropped the six of us into a meat grinder?” out of “I ain’t got time to bleed.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Conan the Destroyer (1984)

I Suppose Nothing Hurts You.  Only Pain.

The inevitable continuation of reviewing Conan the Barbarian is Conan the Destroyer.  When I went into Conan 1, I was well aware of what I was getting myself into.  I had watched the movie again not long before I started reviewing movies, so my memory of it was pretty clear.  Going into Conan 2, I wasn’t even sure that I had ever seen it before, even though I owned it as part of a two pack with the first movie.  But, as it was part of Chris’ request, I sat down to see if I had ever seen the sequel.  And that is today’s review.  Conan the Destroyer was based on characters created by Robert E. Howard, written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, directed by Richard Fleischer, and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olivia d’Abo, Sarah Douglas, Wilt Chamberlain, Tracey Walter, Mako, Grace Jones, Pat Roach, Jeff Corey, and Andre “The Giant” Roussimouff.

Conan the Cimmerian (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and his travelling companion Malak the thief (Tracey Walter), are praying at an altar when they are attacked by the guards of Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas).  After they pass the test of their guards, the Queen offers a quest to Conan.  If he accomplishes the task of escorting her niece, Jehnna (Olivia d’Abo), and the Queen’s guard, Bombaata (Wilt Chamberlain), to retrieve a magical horn that only Jehnna can touch, Conan will be rewarded by having his love, Valeria, brought back to life.  But, before they leave, the Queen privately instructs Bombaata to kill Conan once the horn has been retrieved so that he won’t be around to stop them from sacrificing Jehnna to awaken the dreaming god Dagoth.  Also, he’s going to have to keep an eye on her because she needs to remain a virgin and Conan would most likely knock the bottom out on that girl.  The group sets off, making a pit stop to save the life of a crazy Amazonian chick named Zula (Grace Jones), who then joins them on their quest.

This movie’s really not a whole lot better than its predecessor.  It’s a different story, and a fine one, but it’s not the greatest thing ever.  Much as with the first movie, it never really feels like the writers were able to keep focused.  They have the one driving plot of the princess getting the horn, the side plot about the secret sacrifice, and then a couple of other things that seemed like distractions.  Finding Zula was a scene that took about 15 minutes longer than it should have taken given its relative lack of importance to the main plot.  The part with Conan getting drunk and chatting with the princess didn’t need to happen, as did the part with the princess trying to learn how to fight.  But it wasn’t nearly as distracted as the first movie seemed to be.  I did wonder about the whole part with Jehnna’s virginity.  They made a big deal about how she needed to return a virgin or the sacrifice couldn’t happen.  So big a deal was made about her virginity that I was sure there would be a part where Conan breaks her off a piece and that is what causes the ceremony to go wrong, but they never went for that.  There was never even a moment where there was a chance that Conan would hit it.  I don’t know why, as she was perfectly fuckable and seemed to dig on him.  I guess credit could be given for them not being too predictable.  Speaking of predictions, why did they have to tap the wizard Akiro to find out where the princess had disappeared to when she was taken by the wizard Thoth-Amon?  There was literally one place in 100 miles and they were looking right at it, but they still had to ask him and have him do the silly thing with his fingers he always did to say, “Oh!  She’s in that big castle we’re all looking at.  I guess that makes sense.”  I get the feeling that the actors in the movie used the time between the movies to practice with their swords because the action scenes had improved.  They seemed like someone actually choreographed them this time.  The settings in the movie were also very nice.  I liked the inside of Thoth-Amon’s tower a lot, and the room full of mirrors where Conan fights the invulnerable creature with the red hood.  It was really reminiscent to the room of mirrors scene from Enter the Dragon.  The creature he fought there wasn’t particularly well done, being fairly obviously a guy with a mask on.  In contrast, the creature at the end of the movie was pretty good looking and came off as pretty intimidating even though its mouth and neck looked like a loose vagina.

The cast did fine and suited their parts, but their parts were not always that appealing.  Schwarzenegger was still Schwarzenegger and did not put on that much of a performance, but it seemed like his English was better in this movie than in the last.  His part basically just required him to be a big pile of meat, and he’s good at that.  Olivia d’Abo bummed me out, though.  She was pretty hot and her boobs always seemed right on the verge of escaping her clothing, but it never happened.  Fuckin’ tease.  Her hotness came in stark contrast to Grace Jones.  This chick was supposed to be a model at one point, right?  I have no idea what her appeal is supposed to be.  She looks a lot like Tommy Davidson from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.  I liked Mako as an actor, but by this point I had gotten sick of how ineffectual his character was.  In the first movie, he did next to nothing beyond narration.  In this movie, he had maybe one or two scenes where he used the magic that he was known for wielding.  Also, Tracey Walter’s character replaced Subotai as his partner.  But Subotai was usually pretty stoic in the first movie, whereas Malak was clearly just there for comic relief.  And he was just as annoying as any other comic relief person that can’t produce comedy.  I also would’ve liked a mention to what happened to Subotai from the first movie to this one.  Did he die in the same contract negotiations as Sandahl Bergman?

Conan the Destroyer is only barely distinguishable from Conan the Barbarian.  They’re both pretty basic stories that seem very distracted from their goal, the looks of the movies are fairly good for the time period, and the action has actually been choreographed, to this movie’s credit.  Both are decent enough movies that still hold up fairly well for their age, and I can recommend both for some fairly mindless action.  Conan the Destroyer gets “Enough talk!” out of “A fine magician you are!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

There Comes a Time When Jewels Cease to Sparkle, When Gold Loses Its Luster

Though I already have a pretty decently sized list of requests to get to, I decided to push today’s forward because it seemed like more fun.  Not necessarily more fun as a movie, but certainly with more to make fun of.  Action movies from the 80’s tend to have that going for them.  They’re usually fairly ridiculous and contain lots of problems with story and graphics that can keep a film reviewer such as myself mocking for days.  But this movie has also been considered a classic, so much so that the idea-starved film culture of today has already attempted a remake.  And I’ve already punished them for that in review form.  But I have not reviewed the original, nor have I reviewed its sequel.  So, as requested by Chris, I start today with my review of Conan the Barbarian, based on the stories of Robert E. Howard, written and directed by John Milius, and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Gerry Lopez, Mako, Max von Sydow, Valérie Quennessen, and Cassandra Gaviola.

A tribe of the Barbarian clan called the Cimmerians are massacred by the warriors of a wizard named Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones).  A young boy amongst them named Conan (later Arnold Schwarzenegger) is taken as a slave and chained to a huge grindstone and made to push it around in circles for no discernible purpose.  What it does accomplish is having Conan start getting buffed out and turn into Arnie.  Then it’s face punch time as someone takes Conan from the wheel and has him start fighting to the death in pits against other slaves.  After many successes at this, they start liking him.  They give him women, train him in how to fight better, and have him sit on a table and talk about what is best.  Eventually, he is freed and finds his father’s sword, inexplicably left in an ancient ruin.  He also comes across a witch that tells him how to find Thulsa Doom, but only if he bangs the bejesus out of her.  Pretty sweet deal.  But then she tries to eat him, so he throws her in a fire.  You usually have to wait until the morning after when the booze wears off for the hot woman to turn into a hideous creature.  He also meets a thief named Subotai (Gerry Lopez) and the two start travelling together.  Later, they team up with another thief named Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), who also becomes Conan’s lover.  They rob the Tower of Serpents and steal some jewels, making them rich but putting them on Thulsa Doom’s wrong side.  It also gets the attention of King Osric (Max von Sydow), who gives the trio whatever they desire, so long as they return his daughter (Valérie Quennessen) to him from the clutches of Thulsa Doom.

If someone were to ask me, “Robert, what is best in life?” there are many things I might say.  I might say, “Boobs.”  I may also say, “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”  But I most definitely wouldn’t say, “The original Conan the Barbarian.”  I don’t say that to bag on the movie, because I think it holds up fairly well for what it is.  I mainly say it because I thought it was funny.  But the movie’s okay.  It’s aged quite a bit, and there are plenty of things that would be subpar by today’s standards, but it’s some good sword and sorcery stuff.  Though I liked the overall story of the movie, it seemed a little confused and mixed up.  There was the one driving goal for Conan to get revenge on Thulsa Doom, but he was not so focused on it that he couldn’t be driven off on a few tangents.  A few of them were not by his choice, like being forced into slavery, pushing around a wheel, and killing people for sport.  But then he starts getting distracted by jewels and women and basically keeps Thulsa Doom in the background of his goals.  Even when you think he’s getting on track, he starts dressing like a hippy first.  Sure, it was to infiltrate Thulsa’s temple, but he gets caught almost immediately so he shouldn’t have bothered in the first place.  And when he gets a crack at Thulsa, he gets captured and killed … ish.  I did like the whole magic thing with painting symbols all over his body to bring him back to life and fighting evil spirits to keep his soul around, but it was still pretty tangential.

Basically, it wasn’t their intention to have a fantastically scripted plot; it was to make an action movie.  It was kind of hit and miss on that, though.  There was plenty enough action peppered throughout the movie in case the audience started getting bored, but most of it was kind of goofy looking.  They made a noble enough attempt to make the swordplay interesting, but people that were supposed to be great warriors were basically just swinging their weapons wildly, sometimes not coming anywhere near their target, but getting some obvious blood packets set off anyway.  I remember one part where the guy just had a fairly obvious handful of fake blood that he just slapped onto his chest just after someone swung a sword in his direction.  There were some other hit and miss things for the look of the movie.  The giant snake, I liked.  It was as good as they could do.  Thulsa Doom turning into a snake for no reason I could discern, not so good.  The really obvious green screen stuff in the beginning when Conan’s dad was talking about the miracle of steel was also bad.  When Conan was strapped to the Tree of Woe and left for dead, I thought it was a total badass move for him to bite one of the vultures that was starting to pick at him in the head.  The vulture looked really goofy though.  Even the movie poster comes off as a little goofy to me, but mainly because (as a sword and sorcery movie) the poster looks like something that someone would have painted on the side of their van in the 80’s to get the girls ready before they saw the awesome shag carpet going on inside.  I also had a problem with the music in the movie.  They had a pretty epic, sweeping score going throughout the movie.  It would be nicely done but for the fact that the music didn’t change from the calm mood of the choir and fiddle they were using during the ceremony in the Tower of Snakes when the action started going down.

I think the best performance in this movie (by far) is that of boobs.  I got the feeling that women were not allowed into this movie unless they understood that their boobs would be exposed at some point in the movie.  Most of them were fairly mediocre though, belonging mostly to girls you wouldn’t look twice at in real life, whether those boobs were exposed or not.  Even the main character woman got her boobs out in the movie, but Sandahl Bergman was hindered by her obvious Jewness.  And by that I mean her nose.  None of the performances in the movie really won me over.  James Earl Jones seemed fairly disinterested in being in the movie.  Max von Sydow brought it, but he was only in for one scene.  They did the right thing by having Arnie speak fairly rarely, and practically not at all for the first third of the movie.  Once he was trying to act, he was pretty much only able to convey the feelings of anger and pain with any kind of consistency.

Conan the Barbarian still stands up as a good time, especially since you don’t see that many good swords and sorcery movies.  The story is good but a little distracted at times, the action tries but doesn’t always land, and the performances are some people with their breasts exposed and Arnold Schwarzenegger when he spoke English even worse than he does today.  But still, I like the movie.  I already owned this movie, and I also own the sequel, but we’ll talk about that tomorrow.  For today, Conan the Barbarian gets “Valor pleases you, Crom” out of “And if you do not listen, then to Hell with you!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Expendables (2010)

Welcome to the third installment in my “Prove I’m Not Gay” movies, following the back to back reviews of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sex and the City.  This particular movie could be argued as being the anti-chick flick.  Make a movie that includes almost every action star you could think of, add lots of explosions, forget to write a story, and even throw in a little love story for no reason and you have this movie.  This movie is The Expendables, starring … well … think of an action movie star and input their name here.  And, just to be helpful, it stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, David Zayas, Steve Austin, Charisma Carpenter, Eric Roberts, Giselle Itie, and have Arnold Schwarzenegger (yeah, I copied it off of a website.  Who wouldn’t?), Bruce Willis, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.  Any action stars you thought of that weren’t here will probably be in the sequel.

This story should be easy enough.  Stallone, Statham, Crews, Li, Lundgren, and Couture are the Expendables, an elite group of mercenaries.  In the beginning, they get onto a boat and kill a bunch of pirates holding hostages.  Lundgren goes a little nuts and tries to “break” someone, and if he dies, he dies.  Rambo has to kick him out of the group.  Then the Transporter’s girlfriend dumps him for a douche.  Black Mask wants more money.  Couture is sad about his ear.  Crews makes his tittie muscles dance.  So McClane gives Rocky a mission to kill a general somewhere and John Matrix turns down the mission.  So Judge Dredd and Chev Chelios go there and find out Eric Roberts, with his bodyguard Stone Cold Steve Austin, are really bad, and Cobretti falls in love with the general’s daughter.  Then they go back and kill everybody.

This movie is exactly what everyone expects it to be.  Dumb but exciting.  There is kind of a story to this movie, but it’s very typical and entirely predictable.  Surprising as it may be, Stallone actually has the ability to write some good dialogue from time to time.  He didn’t do that here.  It’s either really cliched or very confusing.  There were times that I was wondering “Why are they talking about this right now?”  And there’s a black guy that’s one of the pirates in the very beginning that both cannot act and cannot be understood.  I think that was a wise choice.

The cast is probably the biggest draw of this movie.  As I said, practically every living action star is in this movie at one point, and the ones that weren’t probably just couldn’t find the time to get in there.  They should’ve just had Van Damme walk by in the background at one point.  Sly looks really weird to me in this movie.  I know the man’s getting old, but he’s still ripped to shreds in this movie.  There are so many veins in this man’s arm that I would argue he had to have some surgically implanted.  But his face looks like he’s had Cher-esque work done.  The rest of the cast is exactly what you expect from them.  Except, maybe, for Jet Li.  For some reason, Jet Li gets his ass kicked in this movie by most people.  If you ask me, I bet Li could beat down everyone on this cast save for maybe Randy Couture.  The other person here is Mickey Rourke, who actually puts on a pretty good, emotion charged performance at one point, regardless to how shitty the dialogue he’s delivering is.  You should give the man an Oscar just for that.

The action is the other draw to this movie.  The fight scenes are pretty good, though I’d actually expect better from such a cast.  But they go more for gun play than for fights.  The other nice thing about this movie is that Sly wanted as many of the explosions and action scenes to be practical as they could manage.  So the shit that blows up into gigantic fireballs actually happened, and looks like it.  Also, I don’t know how he managed, and I believe it started with the newest Rambo, but Sly’s movies pull off some really brutal deaths.  I’ve seen it in things since but I don’t remember it before Rambo where it started to look uncomfortably realistic at times.  I’m cool with it though.  Good work.

So that’s that.  As I said, this movie is exactly what you expect of it.  It’s kind of worth seeing, but you probably won’t be impacted that much by it.  It’s explosions and deaths are cool, but everything else kind of sucks.  I give this movie “Rent it once, and then again in a few months when you’ve forgotten everything about it” out of 786.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.